The great character actor and underappreciated tough guy Dennis Farina is the main selling point of the quiet character piece "The Last Rites of Joe May." It's a terrific performance: natural, menacing, desperate, and unexpectedly tender in equal proportions. It may, in fact, be his most fully realized performance to date. While the film is an enjoyable vehicle for this work, however, its plot line offers little in the way of actual surprises. From the set-up, you will likely be able to gauge exactly where this drama is going at every moment. In truth, though, I don't know that it matters much with Farina on board. Despite the storyline's familiarity and predictability, I was easily won over by Joe Maggio's exploration of disillusionment, regret, and redemption in the most unlikely of places.

Farina plays an aging low-level hoodlum in the changing Chicago crime scene. A small time hustler who once harbored big dreams, he is systematically being phased out by the new generation in control. After a health scare, Farina gets out of the hospital only to discover that his life has been completely upended. Fearing he had passed away, his apartment has been re-rented, his possessions discarded, and his car sold. With nothing to his name, he must now try to navigate survival on the wintry streets. He forms an uneasy alliance with his apartment's new tenant--a single mother with a precocious daughter. As standoffish as Farina would like to be, he is soon getting caught up with this new adoptive family. Soon, he is reevaluating his life choices, trying to correct past mistakes, and attempting to regain control of his life. Is it too late, though? Can he still find happiness and redemption? Or will, in the end, his pursuits lead him to violence?

As I mentioned, once Farina is ingrained with the mother/daughter pair, it's not difficult to see where this tale is headed. I did appreciate the screenplay's restraint and lack of sentimentality in these relationships. I can imagine, in other hands, this veering into cloying sweetness so I credit Maggio for keeping things grounded and real. As things move toward their inevitable climax, I was genuinely invested in the outcome. "The Last Rites of Joe May" has a quiet intensity that suits Farina well and allows him to do what he does best. A great performance in a solid and moving film about the choices we make as we try to reconcile a life lived. KGHarris, 4/12.

Joe May might be the most pitiful, sad-sack mobster ever portrayed in the cinema, which makes for a wonderful story.

"The Last Rites of Joe May" stars Dennis Farina, usually known for playing mobsters and cops, and usually in his native city of Chicago; which is fine, since Farina was once a Chicago cop himself.

The movie opens with an old Joe May being released from a Chicago hospital, after spending seven weeks on his back due to a bad case of pneumonia. After he is released from the hospital, May returns to his shabby apartment - wearing a ridiculously outdated rust-colored leather jacket - and discovers he's been evicted because the owner of the building thought he was dead. The new tenants are a 30-somethingish mother, Jenny, played by Jamie Anne Allman, and her 7-year-old daughter, Angelina, played by Meredith Droeger.

After spending one night in the apartment at the request of Jenny, May leaves and tries to assemble what remains of his life. To his dismay, May finds out his 1989 Cutlass has been impounded and sold. Then he goes to his local bank to cash in whatever he money has left: which turns out to be a measly $443.

"That's all?" May barks at the bank teller.

After being assuring that $443 is all the cash left in his account, May asks for the money as follows: two hundreds, two fifties, five twenties, and 43 single dollar bills.

He puts the hundreds on the top and buries the 43 singles in the middle, folds them in half, and puts a rubber band around his roll; to give the impression to his mob pals that he's still in the pink, which is far from the truth.

The rest of the movie is Joe May going downhill; doing one ridiculous thing after another to raise some cash - even paying a car service driver $10 to open the back door for him, so that his mob cronies in front of their hangout will think Joe May is still in action, and doing quite well, thank you.

If Joe May's predicament wasn't so sad, it would be extremely funny. But it's not; it's shake-your-head pathetically miserable.

The scene most indicative of how low May has fallen is when he is given, as a favor from a mob guy, Lenny, a 50-pound New Zealand hunk of lamb to sell, with 20% of the take going to Lenny after the sale is completed. In the dead of Chicago winter, Joe May lugs this lamb all over Chicago; trying to sell it to whoever will listen, but to no avail. Finally, May is cornered in an alley by a pit bull, which ignominiously bites May and takes possession of the lamb. When May informs Lenny the lamb is now dog food, Lenny says he still wants $200 from Joe May, since the lamb's estimated worth was $1000.

There's also a subplot concerning pigeons, and the young mother, Jenny, who takes pity on May and invites him to stay in her apartment. Unfortunately, Jenny has a detective boyfriend who beats her like a piñata, and because May is obviously still sick with some kind of oppressive hacking cough, May is powerless to do anything to help her.

May tries to visit his only son, Scotty, but is thrown out on his ear, after getting an earful from Scotty on how May mistreated May's wife: Scotty's mother.

I won't spoil the ending, but the movie closes with Lenny, knocking wood on the table, while he utters the incredulous words, "Joe May."

The director, Joe Maggio, who also wrote the screenplay, did a wonderful job exhibiting May as just another run-down-gangster, with no place to go, but down the tubes.

The truth is, Joe May would have been better off in jail.

Acting was very good. The script was ell written. I think it is worth seeing. I think the filming was good and they used Chicago for the setting. I think you well like watching it.